Google Maps introduces upgrades to Explore, For You and a new offers tab

Google has been introducing new India-centric features in its Maps app for sometime now. Recently it had implemented bus travel times from live traffic in 10 cities across India and also started revealing the train status for inter-city trains. Today the company has added three new features for Indian users.

Google Maps app. Image: tech2/Nandini Yadav

The first is an upgrade to the Explore tab which gets seven new shortcuts when you click on it. These are Restaurants, Petrol Pumps, ATMs, Offers, Shopping, Hotels, and Chemists. Google says that using machine learning algorithms will automatically give top suggestions across these categories.

Google Maps Explore tab.

The second is the ‘For You’ tab that has been added to give users personalised information on new restaurants, trending places, and more. These recommendations are made based using machine learning which combines Google’s knowledge about the place along with the ratings that other users have provided for the place.

Finally, Google has launched a new ‘Offers’ section on Maps which allows the user to find deals and claim them at restaurants across the top 11 Indian cities: Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Pune, Chennai, Kolkata, Goa, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Chandigarh and Hyderabad. Google is launching the Offers feature in partnership with EazyDiner and has access to over 4,000 restaurants.

Google Maps Offers tab.

Google will be giving users access to EazyDiner Prime offers for 15 days, across 1,500+ restaurants. Discounts of up to 25 percent can be availed and users just have to look for the ‘EXCLUSIVE’ tag while exploring ‘Offers’ on Google Map.

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